Efficient manipulation of biological systems at the subcellular and molecular scale is desired to enable mankind to further its knowledge of cellular processes and to enhance our ability to modify and control cellular function. A number of applications require the extraction and purification of intracellular molecular species; including but not limited to gene arrays (mRNA extraction), protein discovery (structure and functional from physical attributes), clinical biopsy of tissue (presence or absence of specific proteins), cancer diagnostics (via quantitation of over or under production of specific proteins), protein extraction and purification for purposes of discovering protein function and the regulatory pathways associated with the protein, sampling of cells for viral infection, commercial production of polymerase, commercial production of proteins and enzymes, commercial production of co-factors.
Traditionally, extraction and purification is approached by lysing cells and purifying the lysate. As such, the target material is typically altered from its ‘native’ intracellular state, due to dramatic changes that occur to the environment during lysis and purification. Also due to lysis and therefore death of cells, the extraction can only be performed once for any given group of cells, wherein resampling of the cell population is not an option. Further, the lysed cells cannot be propagated further to yield more product, or to provide verification of the results of the extraction.